Facebook; STOP ALLOWING "FARMING"

Many Facebook members will have seen the post "Like = 1 Pray Share = 100 Prays" or "Like and Share for Prayers" posts. These posts are Scams that unethically use stolen images, often of children and babies, in fragile medical conditions to gather more followers. These scam artists steal pictures from parents, often change the name and use erroneous medical conditions to play on Facebook users pity and garner more followers. This allows them to gradually morph their pages into sites to sell or promote products and/or garners the attention of advertising businesses to start using these pages to promote products.

The ones who ultimately suffer are children who have their private medical information and conditions used falsely for the benefit of others without their parent's permission or consent. Often times these images were originally shared by the parents to promote awareness for the child's disease, to help raise awareness and funding for support and research.

There is nothing more terrifying than scrolling through your feeds and seeing your baby (now 2-3 years later) on a stranger's page, under a different name and/or medical condition and that individual asking for prayers or amens.

This practice must stop, it has been an ongoing issue for 4 years and Facebook has done little to thwart the practice and deter it. Thousands of children and their families have been hurt by this, and it often takes several days and hundreds of messages and reports before the images are taken down, with the scam artists still having access to Facebook and allowed to continue. Facebook must take a firm stance on this unethical practice and stop it from continuing to negatively impact thousands of children and their families who have already endured so much.